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>there’s really nowhere in the world except China that offers consumers as much choice and availability as the U.S. does.

This is true, although I find it interesting that so many people then gravitate to Costco, where consumer choice in a given category is deliberately restricted to one or two product variations selected by the head office.

by pirates20 hours ago|

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Over time I have come to trust Costco’s curation. Their standards seem high, and there are definitely products and brands that they sell that I don’t like, but those are subjective tastes vs objective low quality in my experience. I don’t buy everything there, but I take note of the brands and products that they either keep for a long time or dump quickly.

by patmorgan2315 hours ago|

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Quality vs variety trade off. Costco only has a couple options but they are well better and you don't have to do extra work to make sure you're not buying a piece of crap.

Also, you don't have to shop at Costco exclusively, you still have all the other options available. Costco is just a good default if you're not looking for something specific.

by retired21 hours ago|

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It really baffles me when an American can just walk into a store and buy car parts for their fairly niche model from the 1990s.

Meanwhile in Europe I spend many evening on internet forums and Facebook groups doing research trying to find a part that will work with my car, then finding someone willing to sell it and finally using Google Translate getting someone to ship it to my foreign (to them) country. I even had to resort to proxies just to get car parts from Eastern to Western Europe.

by shimman19 hours ago|

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Weird, I rather have more government mandated vacation, public healthcare, and a pension system that doesn't mean I have to work in my 60s but I understand people have different priorities in life. Hopefully you move beyond the consumerist phase as it's probably the lowest rung of the human experience.

by TaLiTr17 hours ago|

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What a strange and pretentious comment.

They're not mutually exclusive, two things can be had at the same time.

by shimman16 hours ago|

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Not only are they mutually exclusive, the current neoliberal regime has dismantling the welfare state as its explicit goal.

Wish to live in your reality tho, where I can buy a dozen different brands of hot dogs while visiting the doctor for elevated blood pressure without needing to take out a payment plan on klarna.

by retired18 hours ago|

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Jokes on you, in my part of Europe I don’t have access to public healthcare, I don’t have mandated vacation, I don’t have a pension system. And I can’t even have a consumerist phase apparently since car parts are so hard to acquire.